Laze
by Fallen Ark Angel
Summary: Laxus laments uncertainty and the passage of time. Mirajane reminds him of it's necessity. - One-shot.


He was tired.

That kind of tired you can only achieve when you've expended maximum laziness points by lounging in bed, awake, but drowsy for what had to be multiple hours by that point, but you hadn't looked at a clock to confer.

You couldn't look at a clock to confer.

Because when you did, whatever you were trying to avoid would spring right back to the front of your mind and you knew you had to get up. Eventually. It was the natural order of things. You had to get out of bed and go deal with real life.

So it was better to just pretend that the minutes and seconds were meaningless and if you could just stay in that state, that half-awake, distant state of consciousness, then nothing else mattered. At all. Nothing mattered when you were in that state.

Nothing except keeping it, and the person beside you, for as long as you could.

And Laxus had never really found himself caring much for who rested beside him. Honestly, at daybreak he was much more likely to cut and run than anything else.

But that just wasn't an option here.

It had never happened before, him finding himself taking a woman back to his apartment. Theirs were always just as well, or a hotel, honestly, but both those options were out this time. Mirajane owned her own home, but it was very busy with the comings and goings of her two siblings as well as Natsu and Happy, she explained, who Lisanna had invited to stay over during the rainy past few weeks.

"They have," Mira explained, "a hole in their roof. And their house floods, during the rainy season, sometimes."

Laxus had a lot of questions, but the beer was clouding his mind a bit as they left the guildhall together that night, under the cloak of darkness and a midnight haze. So he only nodded his head understandingly, but also recognizing he couldn't exactly take Mirajane to a local hotel. That seemed far more suspicious than just the two of them happening to leave the guildhall together and then walking one another home.

No.

If they were going to end up together that night, it would be at his own apartment.

And maybe it was the alcohol or the long awaited anticipation, but…

He actually didn't mind that.

At all.

It had been a long time coming. Honestly. Stretched over a number of months in which he would frequently leave on his typical long winded jobs. Nearly a year ago now, he found himself sticking around after hours to help Gramps out with something and Mirajane was still around, as she always seemed to be, closing up for the night, and one more drink wouldn't hurt, huh? Especially not if she'd have one with him.

He was teasing her, truly, but Mirajane called his bluff and then they were, in the wee hours of the morning, sharing a drink and just talking, really, with one another. It felt like the two of them shouldn't have anything in common. Nothing more than the similar emblem that adorned their flesh.

And yet…

They both had less than savory childhood traumas that led them down, initially, some rather dark paths, but in the end, they saw the light. Laxus couldn't rightly imagine his life without his Sound Pod strapped to his ears and though most weren't aware, each night before bed, Mirajane found herself unable to sleep without toying with her guitar, just a bit. To stay fresh. Loose.

And though many could consider themselves Fairy Tail wizards, the rank at which both had achieved, but through the definition of an S-Class wizard as well as the amount of myth and legend surrounding their separate bouts of action, very few could consider themselves as highly as Mirajane Strauss and Laxus Dreyar.

And the ones who could, as, fine, they could be listed as rather numerous themselves, hardly fit in all the other brackets. Somehow Laxus doubted Erza was too into late night jam sessions and he couldn't imagine Gildarts seeing the hall as something more than a place to fall back on, when all your other adventures fell through.

Neither Laxus nor Mirajane could had ever rightly described the impact the guildhall had on their lives and, though it meant much to many, I twas meant more as the stepping stone to their eventual departure.

Not their forever entombment.

But where would Mira ever go? She credited Makarov and, by extension, his guildhall with not only saving her life, but those of her younger brother and sister. She saw him as her savior and she would serve his guildhall for as long as he would have her.

And Laxus could travel as far away as he wanted, convince himself of how much better it was, the distance between him and Fairy Tail, he'd always find himself drug right back to it's thick, heavy doors. Dreyars were meant to be there, in Fairy Tail.

Regardless of the capacity.

So, for as surprising as it was even to the two of them, Mirajane and Laxus did have much to discuss, late at night with some ale on both their tongues. And when that first night came to a close, he found himself craving a second and a third and he left, after that, off on another job request, but when he returned, she didn't seemed opposed to the idea of it. Them hanging out again, after hours.

And he and Mirajane had been friends, loosely of course, for a good amount of time. She was one of the only people around in the hall that could, at the very least, go toe to toe with him and though he figured himself ultimately victorious, it wasn't something he wanted to test out. Plus, well...he kinda felt bad for her, maybe, following her sister's death and just marked her as one of the few people he couldn't tangle with.

Least he brought about the actual scorn of his guild mates.

Still, following his reinstating into Fairy Tail, Mirajane was one of the ones to welcome him with the most open of arms. It helped that they now also shared the bond of being locked away for seven years of their life.

But when they were talking, all those years later, late at night in the guildhall, without a soul around, he found that slowly, they didn't talk so much about music. Or the guild. Their magic. They just...talked about everything else.

Sometimes it was hard for them both to remember, the fact that their lives existed outside of the hall and the implication of it. Mirajane was more than a barmaid, fine, but she was also more than just an S-Class wizard. And Laxus traveled for his job, yes, but he was also well traveled because of it and between the two of them, did there live people with more interesting lives up to that point?"

They both doubted it.

In recent years, Laxus had becoming far more friendly towards the Thunder Legion (you know, his actual only friends), but he still found it difficult to speak to anyone other than the trio in more than just a dismissive manner. He wasn't a jerk to others, but he also wasn't openly interested in their lives or struggles.

But he found that he liked it, when Mirajane talked about her own. He liked the way she giggled and would touch his arm and when she smiled at him, he felt one break over his own face as well.

It was difficult for him to transverse between friendship and romantic entanglement. Mostly because, while he slowly found himself desiring the latter with Mirajane, he also was enjoying the former so much. And he'd never known them to exist in the same plane.

"I don't date," he told Mirajane quite bluntly one day when she tentatively broached the topic with him, which began with her mostly explaining her recent falling out with a man and ended with his statement. "I fuck."

"You're drunk," she accused back, but it was with laughter at his vulgarity and he'd never wanted it before.

Both sides.

Friendship and something more.

Never from the same person.

But the more time that he spent with Mirajane, the more he wanted it.

Could they just be separate? The concepts? Couldn't he just still hang out with her, after hours at the guildhall, and also get something more away from it? Without it becoming some sort of massive drag on his life?

"You wanna kiss me," he accused with a slur as they sat together at the bar one night, trying to back into the conversation with the grace of a hippopotamus. In his intoxication, he thought that if he could just get her to come onto him, then maybe he could some how finagle some late night sessions into their already late drinking.

But Mirajane only looked at him with very little amusement as she declared, "I wanna kiss a lot of people."

"Is that right?"

"Sure," she agreed. "Do you not?"

"Wanna kiss you?"

"A lot," she clarified, "of people."

"I guess so."

"It hardly means anything at all," she went on with certainty and he lacked it then, clarity on their direction, but he thought he knew what she meant.

Maybe.

"I wanna be with you," he told her, finally, eventually, after another long sabbatical in which he spent just as much time working as he did trying to run away from what awaited him back at home. But as always, he eventually found himself right back where he belong. Sitting on the stool, at the stroke of midnight, getting drunk with Mirajane Strauss.

"Yeah," she agreed that time, her blue eyes kind of glassy and they shouldn't.

Go back to his place.

But her siblings and Natsu, apparently, were back at hers and it was raining, when they left, so they traced through the slick streets together, drunk and in love with, at the very least, the idea of what was coming and you can't live in moments.

You just can't.

They have to end.

He knew this. And he knew she had to as well.

And yet, as he laid there in bed the next morning, trying to keep that sleepy haze, he felt cheated and wronged and thought he could circumvent time.

Alas, even Raijin wasn't gifted with such power.

When Mirajane began to stir, he felt it slipping away and he was no longer just staring down at the snoozing woman, but rather enraptured again by her deep blue, yet heavy with sleep, eyes.

It was a comfort he wasn't typically accustomed to. As recognition crossed her face, it was with a slight blush, maybe, but not shame and he didn't feel revulsion or fear either. Only shared her shy smile and when she giggled, softly, pulling the sheet closer up around her chest, he only fell onto his back once more, letting out a slight breath as his eyes drifted over to his bedside clock.

"Don't you have work?" he asked as she only rubbed a hand into her head.

"I'm already so late it doesn't matter," she replied, not having to look at the clock to know it was far past the typical time she'd open the hall for the morning. "Kinana probably opened without me."

"They'll all be worried about you."

"Let them." And her tone wasn't laced with sleep, but rather acute awareness. When she shifted closer to him, Laxus didn't shy away, but rather accept his mind no longer being clouded or fogged.

Blinking down at the woman as she settled against his side once more, he accepted that this was a good thing. This was clarity. Recognition.

"We should do this again, sometime," she'd tell him after ten minutes or so, when she finally did feel it necessary to slip from his grasp. "Laxus."

"Yeah." And even though he had to let her go in the moment, he knew it was only that; momentarily. "Any time."


End file.
